Interim
by Gray Duck
Summary: What happens when Sara returns from her grand adventure? Set after 'Season of Self-Discovery.' Recommend you read that one first, but not required. SOC, SN strong friendship. WIP. R&R Please!
1. Default Chapter

****

A/N: Thanks to Brianna, Lynn, and Mary. You guys are the best.

Part One: Bizarro Universe

It is late August. Sara's been home from her cross-country road trip for two weeks now, and life returns to normal, in a strange, Bizarro Universe sort of way. 

Nick notices changes in her since she's been home. She's more open; more friendly; more demonstrative. They go to breakfast every morning, now, the two of them. Sometimes he feels weird and conflicted, especially when she goes on rhapsodically about Cory, the Highway Patrolman from North Dakota whom she met on vacation, and complains about Grissom. He wishes sometimes that she had a girlfriend to confide in instead. Like Catherine, maybe. 

She opens herself up to him more every day, like the petals of a flower in the springtime. She confides all sorts of feelings and embarrassing moments, touching his hand when she talks. 

His heart refuses to reciprocate. She asks him about women sometimes, but he will not tell her anything. After all, what's there to say? Admitting that lately he's had no life outside of work, that all the crap he's given her for being a loner for the past three years is blowing up in his face, would be awkward at first and painful later. Besides, his mind can't get around the fact that she is his best friend; the one who before her trip was cautious and used to hiding everything from everyone. He realizes that now she is different, but he can't hazard a guess about the cause of it, unless it's Cory.

The boyfriend. 

It's not that he misses the old Sara, who was sometimes short with him and always tinged with sadness around the eyes. He much prefers this new Sara who is supremely rational and cautiously optimistic about everything.

If it weren't for the boyfriend, he'd be lapping up the attention she casts his way like it was spring water. Instead his heart is fickle; one day he can barely get enough of her. The next he's chock full of reasons why he must go straight home after breakfast; why he can't go to movies, or shopping, or to the park. 

Looking down at the beginnings of a gut, he thinks he should start skipping breakfast, too.

She seems to suspect he's lying about his sudden plans, but she does not call him on it.

On the days when he avoids her, he holes himself up in his home, watches TV or plays video games, in self-imposed exile. Sulking.

Deep down he knows what the problem is, but he's too embarrassed to admit it. He's jealous. 

Not of the boyfriend, really. It's more like he's jealous of the fact that she has someone now. She was the one he could always count on being more miserable than himself. 

One morning after shift, the two of them head out to the parking lot together to go to the diner for breakfast. Like usual, she is touching his arm while regaling him with a story he's heard before, that he finds neither amusing nor particularly compelling. Okay, perhaps it was funny the first time, but he's pretty sure he's heard this one at least three times. He is tired of playing interested and is about ready to tell her that he'd rather go straight home this morning, when the relative silence of the morning is cut by a gleeful squeal.

She's squealing.

He follows her happy eyes to the form of a man leaning casually against a rusty Dodge Neon, his arms crossed, his eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

She drops Nick's arm like a hot potato and launches herself across the parking lot at the mysterious Neon driver, and Nick feels the familiar tug at his tummy.

He assumes this is the boyfriend. _'That's Officer Boyfriend to you, sonny,' _his brain retorts, and he tries to escape, staying out of sight and edging along the parking lot in the direction of his Tahoe. But he doesn't move fast enough for the cat-like quickness of Sara Sidle, and she is calling him back to meet Officer Boyfriend, who presumably drove down just to surprise her.

It's so damned cute that it nauseates him.

He rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses and ambles over to play the third fiddle to their romantic hodown. 

It's an all time high in the history of discomfort, he thinks. 

"Cory," she says in a sweet sing-song voice, "this is Nicky," she says.

"Nicky," Cory shakes his hand in a man's man sort of way; not quite hard enough to break any bones, but hard enough to assert one's tough guy image. 

"It's sure nice to meet you," Nick tells him, and feels a bit like Gomer Pyle next to this pale Northerner with his clipped speech and wide O's. 

The discomfort floats in the air between the two men. Sara just grins broadly.

It's not until the three of them are seated around a table at the diner that Officer Boyfriend removes his sunglasses to peruse the menu. Sara is snuggled in the booth alongside him, and Nick couldn't feel more miserable and uncomfortable if he tried. To amuse himself, he flirts with the waitress and shoots suggestive glances across the diner to a middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair.

Sara stares at him like she's never seen him before.

He begs off as soon as he's finished with his pancakes. "I need to get home. I'm expecting company," he says, and Sara is still staring at him like he's a stranger. She knows there's no company, but Cory doesn't, and he stands and extends his pale hand to him. "It was great to meet you, Nicky," he says. "Thanks for all you do for Sara," he says, like she is his child, and on any other day Nick imagines Sara choking him.

But she shifts her concerned eyes from Nick to Cory, and they soften around the edges. She's got it bad for a man who believes she's not capable of being self-sufficient, and Nick is suddenly struck by how hilarious it all is.

Dark humor seems to be the only kind that amuses him, these days.

He goes home, then, and watches TV for a while - flipping channels with breakneck speed - before shutting it off. He paces through the kitchen to the dining room and then the living room a few times before going to take a cold, lonely shower and tumbling into his lonely bed.

Lonely.


	2. Withdrawal

****

Part Two: Withdrawal

He doesn't see Sara again for a few days. He assumes she's made last-minute arrangements with Grissom to take a few vacation days, since Cory is in town. 

What Nick finds unusual is that she doesn't call, or stop by, and Nick's days are filled with Sara withdrawal. When it occurs to him to call her, he assumes she is busy, and this welcomes all sorts of unbidden images into his mind.

Naughty ones.

She's his best friend, and even though he _did _act like an ass the last time they were together, and even though Officer Boyfriend is in town, possibly keeping her busy, he still thinks it's strange not to hear from her.

Even if he doesn't deserve to. He knows, deep down, that he really was an ass. 

He realizes that he has no life without her, and he spends all of his extra time at home on the couch watching the Spice Channel. He loathes himself.

When Sara finally does come back to work, the distance between them is like a chasm. She doesn't respond to his good-natured, albeit forced, teasing; she doesn't speak to him, or even look at him, and he is even more lonely than ever. 

Sure, there's Warrick and Greg.

But they're Warrick and Greg. They're not Sara.

At the end of shift the two of them are in the locker room. Nick makes a last-ditch effort to salvage things, feeling as if they aren't right by the time he goes home, they might never be right again. The queasy feeling in his stomach is rolling, and his nerves are clawing at his insides, and she is still ignoring him.

"Sar," he starts, and she shoots a glare to silence him.

"You want breakfast? I'll buy," he offers, and he forces his smile not to betray him.

"I don't _believe_ you," she mutters, slamming her locker with more force than is necessary.

"What?" His voice cracks.

"You have a lot of nerve," she spits. "The last time we went out together you were a total jerk," her voice is so full of rage that it scares him. She turns and leaves the room, and he is actually a little afraid to follow her, but he does anyway.

He waits to initiate conversation again until they are in the parking lot.

"Sar," he starts, "what did I do?" He knows.

She wheels on him. "What did you do," she screeches. "You were rude to Cory. You ignored us both at the diner. You've been pouting and jealous since I came home, Nick, and I didn't understand because it's not like we're together," she trails off. Her anger is running out of steam. "But I overlooked that," she says, "because I care about you and I thought you were just going through a rough time. But then you were so rude to Cory and to me. I just don't understand." She wipes angrily at the tears pricking her eyes. "And now you're being nice again," she says.

"Uh," Nick says. He's always been an eloquent bastard.

More like just your basic, run-of-the-mill bastard, he thinks.

"It's not like you to be so moody," she says, and she leans against Grissom's Tahoe.

Nick feels the force of her words in his knees. Suddenly he feels weak and pathetic and he sinks to the curb with a soft thud. "Sar," he starts, his voice strained, and he feels like an oversized infant. 

She takes pity on his performance and brushes the curb with the fingers of her right hand before sitting along side him. 

"I'm sorry, Sweets," he says. He knows he should say more, but really, what more is there to say other than he's sorry? 

"I know," she says, covering his left hand with her right.

They sit together, on the curb, in the August sun for the next hour.

Quiet, but together.

Things gradually improve after that. They resume their morning breakfasts. Nick makes a renewed effort to go to the gym in the mornings after his breakfast has settled, sometimes dragging Sara with him.

She loathes the gym, but is a good sport. She likes to swim, and she does laps while he does some lifting and strength work. Sometimes after breakfast they go to his house instead and he makes her sit on his feet while he does hundreds of stomach crunches. She sits on his back one day when he decides to do pushups, a decidedly intimate activity, to be sure.

He laughs to himself. He is not one to complain when beautiful women want to ride him.

Sara would kill him if she knew the inner workings of his deviant mind.

They don't speak about the day that Cory arrived in Vegas. In fact, she stops talking about him altogether.

There's an old song about some things being better left unsaid, and Nick assumes that this is the case, but it's not entirely true.

One slow morning Nick walks into the break room for a cup of coffee and overhears a very interesting conversation.

Sara and Catherine are standing around the microwave oven, their backs to the door, waiting for a bag of Orville Redenbacher's movie theater butter popcorn to finish popping. Sara is speaking.

"He thought Nicky was a girl," she's saying. "He thought that this Nicky that I spend all my time with was a woman. He was pretty shocked when he met him." She giggles uncharacteristically. "Then when they met, he thought maybe he was gay."

Nick furrows his eyebrows.

Catherine is laughing, now. "Our Nicky?"

"I know, definitely not gay. But he didn't understand how a man would want to go shopping and stuff with me without, you know, making a move," she says. "He didn't understand that I'm not Nicky's type."

Catherine looks skeptical. "What makes you think you're not," she asks.

Sara blows a raspberry at the other CSI. "Whatever," she says. "Nicky's women are not human. They're like those alien women in the pleather jumpsuits from 'Dude, Where's my Car?'"

Catherine's expression seems to indicate that she's never seen the masterpiece of cinematic genius that is 'Dude, Where's my Car?'

If Sara notices Catherine's confusion, she ignores it. "Anyway, we had a huge fight over it. He wanted me to stop hanging out with Nick so much. You know how I am, no one can tell me what to do. He was pissed, I was pissed; it was a giant mess. He left the next day. I don't know what to do, Cath," she says, and her voice warbles a little.

Catherine gives her shoulder a rub. "Have you talked to him since?"

"A little. We're both angry, and until one of us caves we're just stuck, I think. We're both so stubborn. He was so mad he got back in his car and drove for three days straight."

The microwave beeped, signaling that the popcorn was ready. Nick crept out of the break room, careful not to make a sound, and went back to the lab to check on some results. 

The coffee could wait.


	3. Yenta

****

Part Three: Yenta

Nick is still reeling as he heads to DNA to pick up some results. Sara and Officer Boyfriend are on the outs. And _he's _the reason! He's not sure what to make of this, but he's a little relieved to learn that they're not together anymore.

He chastises himself. "It's wrong to find joy in another's pain, Nicholas," his mother's voice echoes in his mind. 

Now, Sara's reaction to last week's breakfast invitation makes more sense. No wonder she was so angry with him. He was the cause of their breakup.

He gloats, just a little bit, because Sara chose him over Cory.

That doesn't really mean anything, though, he tells himself. She doesn't like to be told what to do.

It's not that he did anything right.

It's that Cory did something wrong.

The tiny high is over almost before it began. Now, instead of joy, he feels a greedy sort of satisfaction in his tummy, and it makes him feel a little guilty.

He hopes Greg can take his mind off of this, and he yells for his friend from the hallway. "Got my results, Sanders?"

"They're in the tray, Nick," a feminine voice responds. "There's a pink post-it with your name on it," the petite woman continues.

"Molly," Nick smiles at the substitute from the Trace lab. "I wasn't expecting you." 

"Apparently not," she smirks at him.

He peruses the results. "Huh," he says. "Not a match for anyone we know of. Bummer." He turns to leave. "Like your new haircut," he adds.

Molly rolls her eyes and rakes her fingers through the short tangle of curls. "Thanks," she says. 

He turns around to face her again. "When do you get off?"

The substitute DNA tech looks at her watch. "Another hour."

"Want to grab breakfast? Sara and I go every morning."

Molly shakes her head. "Nah, you go on," she says.

"Come on, it'll be fun."

"Nick," Molly lowers her voice and looks about before continuing. "Aren't the two of you an item? I don't want to be a third wheel."

It's Nick's turn to roll his eyes. If only she knew. 

"First off, Sara and I are not an item. You wouldn't be a third wheel. Secondly, invite someone along if you want. I don't mind."

"I don't know," Molly shrugs. "There's really no one to ask," she says.

"Nick," David Phillips, the assistant coroner, sticks his head into the DNA lab. "I've got something interesting for you, if you have a moment."

"Sure," Nick says. A flicker of something familiar passes over Molly's face, and he knows, now, how to make the sick feeling in his stomach go away. "You're going. Be ready." He flashes her a grin and takes off after David.

"Hey," he says, once he catches up with him, "what are you doing after shift?"

The shy coroner looks at Nick out of the corner of his eye. "Nothing," he says.

"A group of us are going to breakfast," Nick tells him. "Why don't you join us?"

He looks, for a moment, like he might refuse. 

Nick continues. "Come on, it'll be fun."

"All right," he consents. "I'll go."

Over an hour later, the four young coworkers arrive at the diner. Molly steps out of her Volkswagen and shoots Nick the look of death.

"What's the matter," Nick teases, knowing full well what the problem is.

Molly hurries over to him. "Could you be a little _more _obvious?"

Nick makes a confused face.

The petite Trace tech rolls her eyes. "I don't want you getting all _Yenta_ on me."

Nick grins. "Is that what you call it? We're just having a friendly breakfast."

"Friendly breakfast my ass," Molly said, fishing a headband out of her purse. "This is an ambush, man," she slides the band into place and attempts to smooth her chestnut curls.

"Potato, potahto," he smiles. "David's a great guy," he tells her. 

Molly takes a sudden interest in her footwear.

Nick stops dead in his tracks. "I don't understand why you never told me," he tells her. "You have a thing for him, and you're too shy to say anything!"

Molly turns to face him, walking backwards. "Cease. With. The talking."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

She chooses not to answer the question. "Does my hair look alright?"

"You look great."

Molly picks at the food on her plate, cutting the fresh fruit into even tinier pieces. She clammed up the moment they sat down, and she and David just follow Sara and Nick's conversation, back and forth, like a tennis match. 

"So, Moll," Nick says. 

She kicks him under the table. 

He winces. "You still got that puppy? What was his name, Bert?"

She nods. "Yeah," she digs in her wallet for a photo. "Here's my baby," she offers him a photo of herself with the dog. 

Nick oohs and ahs appropriately, making sure that David sees the photo, which in turn earns him another sharp kick to the shin. 

David flashes Molly a genuine smile. "He looks like a Vallhund," he says.

Molly grins at him. "He is," she says proudly. "You're familiar with the breed?"

"We had one, when I was growing up," he tells her. "Named Anna."

She smiles at him unabashedly. 

"Hey," Sara pipes up. "Could we stop over and see him when we're done here?"

She, too, gets kicked under the table. 

Sara yelps just a little. "Wow, that coffee's hot."

"Sure," Molly says. "You guys can visit."

David smiles at her again.

The four of them ride caravan style to Molly's small town home. She fiddles at the door, a nervous tremor in her hands making the keys jingle. 

Nick distracts David with talk of his case.

Once they're in the sunny, cheery home, a small dog runs straight for them, yelping. "Hello, big boy," Molly greets him, picking the squirming animal up and scratching him behind the ears. He licks her face in greeting.

Molly doesn't mind, wrapped in her world of dog love. 

David looks at her with adoration. 

Molly hands the dog off to David and heads to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. "Make yourselves at home," she calls. The three move from the entryway to the living room, which is decorated with modest furnishings and framed black and white photos.

"Great shots," David observes, looking at the photos. "Who is the photographer?"

Molly blushes, beaming. "I am," she tells him. "I have a darkroom in the basement."

"Wow," he says. The dog still squirms in his arms. "I'd love to see it sometime."

"Sure," she says. "No problem." She holds out a steaming mug. "Coffee?"

An hour later, Nick and Sara exit the town home. David and Molly are in the backyard watching Bert attempt to herd songbirds.

"Score one for us," Nick says. 

Sara rewards him with a gentle smile. "That was mostly your doing," she tells him.

"Well, yeah, but you _did _get injured in the line of duty." 

"Yeah," Sara lifts her pant leg to look at the beginnings of an ugly bruise. "Why does she have to wear steel toed boots? Good God, that woman can kick."

"I think she went to college on a soccer scholarship."

"Well, that explains it." Sara leans against Nick's Tahoe. "How come putting other people together is so much easier than trying to find someone on your own?"

"Jesus, that's the fifty million dollar question," he grins at her under his eyelashes.

Sara doesn't return his smile for a moment. Instead she blinks, and takes a breath. "I need to tell you about what happened when Cory was here," she says.

Nick thinks maybe he knows, after overhearing the conversation in the break room. As much as he cares about Sara and only wants her to be happy, he can't help but think she's better off without some jerk that gets jealous of her friends.

He smiles at her and then looks away, a little nervous. "Okay, you want to go to the gym?" He climbs into his Tahoe and starts the engine.

"Nah," she says. "Let's go do pushups instead."

"You got it," he tells her, and closes the door. He's glad for the tinted windows. They conceal the blush that's creeping up the back of his neck. All the way back to his place, he practices his surprised face, and his shocked face, and his 'you've got to be kidding me' face. He's not supposed to know about the breakup, after all, so he's got to have a convincing reaction. 

The sick satisfied feeling that went away when he was with Molly and David is sneaking back into the pit of his stomach.

He wills it to go away by telling himself that it's not his fault that Sara broke up with Cory; not directly, anyway. It's not like he told her to do it; although he would have liked to, if only because he was a little jealous when she was with Cory.

He likes it when they are both lonely, he thinks.

His nerves are a little on edge when they arrive at his home. He wants to beg off, tell her he's too tired for pushups this morning, but one look at her earnest face and he knows that he can't.

If nothing else, he owes it to her to listen. 

So he lets her in, and he practices his faces when her back is turned.


	4. Green Eyes

****

Part Four: Green Eyes

A few evenings later, pink roses are delivered to the Trace Lab for Molly, and she beams from ear to ear.

Sara smiles at Nick when they see Molly walk past the break room with the vase. "You did a good thing. Maybe they'll name a kid after you or something," Sara says, rubbing the bruise on her shin thoughtfully.

Things haven't been quite the same between Nick and Sara since that morning a few days ago; when Nick was doing pushups and Sara sat cross-legged on his back, telling him the story of the fight she had with Cory. Granted, Nick already knew what had happened, but to hear her tell the story was another thing entirely. He feels at fault, even though he knows that Sara is angry with Cory. Even though he knows that she's better off without him. 

Sara knows about the guilt and Nick guesses this is the reason for her incessant chattering about everything and nothing at all. She's trying to cheer him up. Or possibly annoy him so much that he'll forget about feeling guilty.

What she doesn't know is that he's also angry. After their fight, Sara still wants Cory back. Does she think she deserves that treatment? Does she think that he's The One? 

Nick doesn't dare say anything. Sara Sidle is nothing if not stubborn, and he knows better than to tell her what she should be doing. He'd be no better than Cory is, in her eyes.

So he puts on a sweet face wills all of his anger to drain out of his face, and assures her that Cory will call, and if he doesn't call, then he's an idiot and she's better off without him.

But she's still a little sad, which angers him even more.

Time passes. Nick's anger fades away, as does Sara's disappointment. Cory is just a memory that they try hard not to remember. The morning breakfasts are now a four-person affair, with David and Molly joining them at every opportunity. Nick watches them with wistful eyes, because even though Sara is alone again too, he still feels lonely. After the gym, he always goes home and watches television or plays video games or surfs the Internet.

Now instead of being jealous of Sara's happiness, he merely transferred his feelings to David, the unsuspecting coroner, and Molly, the dog loving Trace tech.

It's not fair; he knows it.

He tries to bring it up to Sara every now and again. She's always urging him to discuss his feelings, after all. He tells her about how he feels jealous of David and Molly and how happy they are.

Sara just watches him; eyes filled with words that she refuses to say. 


	5. Pact

****

Part Five: Pact

He is walking down the hall before shift when he spots her, alone in the break room. Sara slumps in the uncomfortable plastic lounge chair, gripping her coffee mug a bit too tightly, and all the while her bottom lip is quivering.

He can read her thoughts. 'Stop it. Stay strong. Big baby.'

Nick senses something is wrong the moment he sees her face, before she even senses his approach. The stiff upper lip he's noticed of late has been replaced with a look of shear hopelessness. The strongest woman he knows, short of his mother, looks like she's been broken.

"Hey," he says, softly, not wanting to draw any unwanted attention from the passersby in the hallway. "What's wrong, Sweets?" He closes the door behind him and sits down next to her at the break room table.

Her lip starts quivering again.

"What happened?" He pulls her in close to him, rubbing her shoulder blades with the knuckles of his right hand. He expects her to fight him, but she sinks into his chest, boneless. He knows, then, that she is in a bad way. A very bad way. He feels her shoulders begin to shake and he strokes her hair and murmurs to her.

Sweet words for his sweet girl, with her sweet smile.

She sniffles, then, a loud wet sound, and he reaches in his pocket for a Kleenex. She blows her nose, and it sounds a bit like a freight train, and he still rubs her shoulder blades and her hair. Like nothing happened, like he doesn't fear for his new button down shirt. After all, he'd found it on the clearance rack, and it isn't Calvin Klein or anything.

But it doesn't matter if it was. He's just that kind of person.

Finally, she speaks. "I, I."

He says nothing. He just looks at her face and waits for her to speak.

"Still no word," she whispers. "It's three weeks, like I've been forgotten. I guess it just hurts."

"I know," he says, pulling her boneless body closer to his chest. "But I think you're unforgettable."

She scoffs. "I'm clearly not."

"I couldn't forget you if I tried," he says, his voice trying to soothe her.

"That's only because I'm _that_ annoying."

"You're _so_ not annoying," he grasps at things in his mind. "You're important to me." He realizes his misstep almost instantly, and she tenses in his arms, and he knows he opened up an altogether new can of worms.

He wishes he could turn back time, like Cher.

"Exactly," she says, and he knows what's coming next. "I'm not important to him." Her voice takes on a steely tone. "Apparently never was. But why not tell me that? Why just leave me hanging?" She wipes angrily at the streaky tears sliding down her cheeks.

"That's right," Nick tells her. "I'd rather see you angry than sad."

"But why," she says, and he can tell she's winding down. He's seen her angry often enough to know. "Why does this happen to me?"

He presses his forehead to hers, shifting her body to face him. "I think it's possible that you haven't met the right guy yet, that's all."

Their faces are too close together and when she looks at him her eyes cross. "I am not going to live forever, Nicky. Sometimes I want kids, and a husband, and a dog, and a Goddamn picket fence." She blinks. "I want it like David and Molly. I feel like I'm running out of time."

Her words scare him. He is lonely too, and no closer to finding permanence than she is. "Me too, Sweets."

She snorts. "Whatever. You could have a different woman every week."

He furrows his eyebrows at her. "That's not true," he says. "But that's not the point. I haven't found The One. When I was going out with a lot of different girls, it was only because I was trying to find her."

She blinks.

"So why did you stop?"

Nick shrugs. "Maybe I just gave up."

"You shouldn't," she tells him. 

All he can muster is a shrug. He feels even more pathetic than usual.

"You were really looking for the one?"

He nods.

"Serious?"

"As a heart attack." He presses his index finger to her nose. "I'll tell you what. Let's make a pact. If we're both single when you turn 35, we'll get hitched. 'Kay?"

"You're insane."

"Am not."

"Are too. You think I want to be with someone who only wants me because he doesn't want to die a lonely old man?"

Nick blinks.

"Hey," he says, his voice stern. "That hurt."

She tries to avoid eye contact, but he forces her to look at him. 

"Tell me. Who doesn't want to marry their very best friend?"

Her eyelashes flutter, and she smiles just a little shakily. A tear sneaks down her cheek. "I do. I want to marry my best friend," she says.

"I hope it's still me, by then," he tells her.

She smiles, and laces both arms around his neck. "You really are the best friend a girl could ever ask for. You've made me feel better."

"I was serious, you know. I could be a good husband," he says, stroking her back. "I can cook a little and I'm handy around the house and I'm pretty good with cars."

She pulls away from him, suddenly, and he's afraid he said too much until he sees the glint in her eye.

"If you think that's all husbands are good for, you're wrong," she says, a mischievous tone to her voice.

He shrugs. "I think I could be good at that stuff, too."

"We'll just have to wait and find out," she says, grinning, and before he can respond, she's up, out of her chair, and across the room. "You've got yourself a deal, Nick Stokes."

He grins at her, a genuine smile, and he feels better than he has in weeks.

The door opens just then. "Hey, guys," Warrick says. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Sara replies. "Nothing you'd believe, anyway," she mutters under her breath. "I'm going to go see Greg before shift starts. I need to check on some results from yesterday."

"He's out again," Warrick throws his remark over his shoulder. "It's that girl," he snaps his fingers, trying to jog his memory. "The one who goes out with David."

"Oh," she says. "Good, I have to tell her something," she starts to skip down the hall.

The two men watch as she leaves. "The Hell," Warrick shakes his head. "That girl's getting nuttier by the day."

Nick grins to himself, shocked by the turn his life has taken in the past ten minutes. "Tell me about it," he says. He turns to the newspaper spread out on the table. Warrick is blissfully unaware.

Nick is just blissful. He's engaged. Sort of.

****

A/N: This is the final part in this series. Don't panic, it's not the end for this "universe." There is more to be played out, I'm sure. Thank you for all your reviews. This part, and really this piece, was inspired by an interview with George Eads on The Late Late Show. He makes mention of a similar arrangement with Jorja Fox. I thought, if something like this can exist in real life, than it can certainly exist in fanfic!!!


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